There are, in fact, fewer than 7,000 Poles claiming the Job Seekers' Allowance. Indeed, there are fewer than 13,000 JSA claimants from the "Accession Eight" countries (Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Slovenia). Whatever else these eastern europeans have been doing in Britain, they've not been mooching off the benefits system. And it is a lie - dirty and simple - to suggest they are. There are, in fact, twice as many benefit claimants from "old" europe as there are from "new" europe. (See Table 2 here for confirmation.)

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Welfare firms are involved in widespread "gaming" of the Work Programme, with the most vulnerable jobseekers often ignored because they are too costly to help, according to new research into how the government's flagship employment initiative is working in practice.

Providers privately admit they are focusing resources on the "easy customers" who are more likely to generate a fee, and sidelining jobless clients who require more time and investment to become ready for work, a process known as "creaming and parking," the study says.

It concludes that the quality of services offered to jobseekers is being undermined because the design of the Work Programme, in which companies are not paid until customers have been in work for two years, creates such huge financial stresses that many providers have little option but to cut corners.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Just a day after Left Foot Forward reported on poll findings indicating a shift in the public mood towards the government's singe and burn welfare policies, the Welsh government has laid bare the challenges that Whitehall's reforms pose to Wales.

A second report produced for the Welsh government's ministerial task and finish group for Welfare Reform has found that reforms announced before December's autumn statement will reduce total benefit and tax credit entitlements in Wales by around £590 million in 2014-15.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

The use of B&Bs to house poor families for over six weeks has risen by 800% since the last general election,as shown FOI requests to 352 Councils with 242 responses . 125 reported placing poor families in hotels for six weeks or more, 54% of these councils are Conservative.

Local authorities point to welfare cuts and a lack of affordable housing, making B&Bs the only option is some cases. Councils are currently spending an average of £650 a week to keep people off the streets.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

In a reasonable world they would be worthless except for industrial purposes.

The diamond invention is far more than a monopoly for fixing diamond prices; it is a mechanism for converting tiny crystals of carbon into universally recognized tokens of wealth, power, and romance. To achieve this goal, De Beers had to control demand as well as supply. Both women and men had to be made to perceive diamonds not as marketable precious stones but as an inseparable part of courtship and married life. To stabilize the market, De Beers had to endow these stones with a sentiment that would inhibit the public from ever reselling them. The illusion had to be created that diamonds were forever -- "forever" in the sense that they should never be resold.

At around 7 P.M. [yesterday], the two thieves, armed with handguns and wearing bullet-proof vests, entered the Printemps department store in a Paris neighborhood popular with shoppers and held up the De Beers concession stand for $4 million worth of gems. No shots were fired during the robbery, and an eyewitness said that it occurred so quietly that many shoppers nearby were not even aware that a theft was taking place.

The contest for the title of sick man of Europe is a close-fought one. Is it Greece, where the 20% fall in output is of Great Depression proportions? Is it Spain, with its broken housing markets, wobbly banks and 50%-plus youth unemployment? Or could it be Italy, which has a smaller economy now than it did in 2001, saw the biggest fall in gross domestic product of any G7 country last year, and has a trend rate of growth barely above zero?

A good case could be made for giving Italy the nod. Ireland and Greece are at least getting the benefits of internal devaluation: the cuts in wages and public spending are reducing labour costs and making their economies more competitive. Spain's trade performance is improving. Italy is getting the worst of all worlds: austerity is compounding the impact of a poorly functioning economy, leading to exceptionally weak growth.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

French President Francois Hollande has said that seven French nationals, four adults and three children, have been kidnapped in Cameroon by an organisation known to French authorities.

Hollande confirmed the kidnapping during a visit to Greece on Tuesday, saying the group, who were visiting the Waza National Park, were all tourists from the same family who had been seized by a Nigerian-based "terrorist group".

An anonymous source said the tourists went to visit the park, located near the Nigerian border, on Monday. "They slept in the park's tourist camp where they left this morning," the source said.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Romanian police on Tuesday busted a human egg-trafficking ring involving Israeli specialists in assisted reproduction, just months after several Israeli doctors were sentenced in a similar case.

Police and prosecutors said the network consisted of 11 people, including Israeli doctors and Romanian managers of a Bucharest clinic, but declined to say how many people were detained as the searches were ongoing.

But the U.S. seems to have already figured out the implications for citizenship:

The incident points out what critics say is a glaring inequity in U.S. citizenship regulations. A child adopted overseas by a U.S. citizen is eligible to become an American, and a baby born in the USA is American even if the parents are not.

But a child born to a U.S. citizen overseas through the increasingly common practice of in vitro fertilization with embryos from donor eggs and sperm is not American, unless an American is one of the donors. And that can be hard to prove since clinics may not reveal such things about their donors due to confidentiality agreements, immigration law experts say.

What about in vitro fertizilation in the U.S.? Is the child "naturally born" (answer of the current Supreme Court is probably: Yes, if Republican)

There is a big behind-the-scenes row over several aspects of the banking union; France opposes the recommended staff level of 2000 for the SSM, preferring to keep more functions at national level; the consultancy that has drawn up an internal report proposes to sideline the new chairwoman of the SSM, with all reporting lines going past her directly to the ECB; the supervisory department shall consists of five divisions, including one that exclusively watches over smaller banks not supervised by the SSM; Beppe Grillo draws a huge crowd on Milan's Piazza di Duomo, promising a referendum on the euro; Silvio Berlsuconi has changed his mind yet again on whether he wants to be prime minister - now he says his supporters want him badly in the job; Robert Maroni, president of the Northern League, says No, as the centre-right's candidate for the job of PM is Angelino Alfano; the deputy chief of the Partito Democratico said Italy had enough labour market reforms, and it was now time to wait and see; the centre left poses a strong challenge to the centre-right in Lombardy of all places, one of the crucial swing states; Berlusconi sends a letter to Italian households, explaining what forms they will have to fill in to get their property tax back - his key electoral promise; he also accused Angela Merkel to be part of a criminal conspiracy behind the coup d'etat to drive him out of office in 2011; the Italian credit crunch got a lot worse in January; French foreign minister Laurent Fabius speaks out of turn and says growth will be revised downwards; the Portuguese opposition leader says Portugal would be much better off if it obtained the same conditions as Greece; the Greek government said it will not fire 1900 civil servants after all, having miraculously found jobs for all them; the third placed Cypriot presidential candidate said he will consult with supporters over whom of the other candidates to endorse; the number of Spanish car registrations has fallen below the level of Belgium; Spanish mortgage volumes contract by over 10%; the Spanish government is content with the success of a short dated auction; there has been some progress over the banking directive, but the European Parliament is not budging on bonus payments, and insisting on full transparency; Germany's environment minister estimates that the German government's new energy strategy will cost 1tn; Martin Wolf, meanwhile, says the eurozone crisis is likely to get a lot worse again.

Ralitsa Behar, who lived and studied in the UK and chose to go back to Bulgaria and build a career here instead of the UK, had reacted to Farage's renewed criticism of Bulgaria in a bid to fuel fears over new immigrants, coming as of 2014.

...

Following is the full text of the reply that Mr. Farage sent to Novinite.com (Sofia News Agency) and Novinite.bg:

...

I am sure Bulgarians love their country. How would your people feel if at the accession of, let's say, Turkey to the EU in the near future, one million Turkish migrants came to live in Bulgaria? Would the people of Bulgaria really be happy about that? Would you really be happy, that without your consent, one million migrants took advantage of your welfare and healthcare system at the expense of the Bulgarian taxpayer? I think not.

Research commissioned by Mr Byrne from the House of Commons Library found that real wages are £1000 a year lower than they were in May 2010.

The new figures show that people are £21 a week poorer in real terms than they were at the time of the general election. Real wage were £472 per week in November 2012, compared with £493 per week in May 2010.

Out of the last 31 months since the election, real wages have only increased nine times.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Shareholder activism over corporate pay has claimed one of its biggest victories yet after the Swiss pharmaceutical group Novartis was forced to abandon the award of a $78m "golden gag" non-compete payment to its outgoing chairman.

The UK investor advisory body, Pirc, said the move could inspire a repeat of last year's "shareholder spring" when a series of rebellions over pay forced out the chief executives of Aviva, AstraZeneca and Trinity Mirror.

Shareholders in Novartis reacted with fury over the weekend when it emerged that Daniel Vasella was to receive the payment - $13m a year over six years - to prevent him from giving advice to competitors after he steps down from the board this week. Vasella's attempt to deflect their anger by pledging to give some of the money away to philanthropic causes was unsuccessful, as investor anger became amplified by criticism from the Swiss public. On Tuesday, the company said the board of directors and Vasella had agreed to cancel the non-compete agreement in the light of the furious response.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Channel tunnel operator Eurotunnel said it would challenge a British watchdog's view that its takeover of three ships owned by failed ferry operator SeaFrance would hamper competition on cross-Channel services.

The Competition Commission (CC) said earlier on Tuesday that passengers and freight customers could face higher prices with the arrival of MyFerryLink, a ferry service Eurotunnel launched using the three former SeaFrance vessels.

The group last year branched out into sea transport with the 65m (£56m) purchase of three of the ships formerly operated by SeaFrance, a unit of French railway operator SNCF that went into liquidation in 2012.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Spain suffered its second biggest corporate crash on Tuesday when real estate giant Reyal Urbis filed for insolvency as banks lost patience with a debt-strapped company that never recovered from the country's burst housing bubble.

Reyal Urbis filed for insolvency after failing to renegotiate 3.6bn (£3.1bn) of debt with creditors that are increasingly impatient with the numerous real estate companies that have fallen foul of the property implosion.

With house prices still falling four years after the bubble burst and the overhang of unsold new properties estimated at up to 1Mm houses and apartments, the future looked bleak not just for Reyal Urbis but other developers weighed down with debt.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Back in the 1940s, it was common to consider real living standards to be the sum of home production (i.e., GDP) minus any output sold abroad (exports) and plus any output sent from abroad (imports). The table below is reproduced from Keynes's Collected Works (Volume 27) and had been produced by the Economic Section of the War Cabinet to study how Britain could afford an increase of living standards as compared with the pre-war period.

...

The simple fact that exports represent the use of domestic resources for the production of output that will benefit foreigners has become (oddly) contentious. Perhaps, it is because of a mistaken belief that accepting that exports are a cost to the nation (and thus lower a nation's standard of living) means that national policies should turn against exports to prevent a nation from losing any output that it worked so hard to obtain, and should aim at a trade deficit instead.

...

This view is based on two (unwarranted) concerns. The first is that a rise in net exports is the best strategy for getting out of recession. This is obviously not true, as fiscal policy is an alternative (and more effective) solution. Yet, the attempt to use exports to drive demand is functional to the refusal to use fiscal expansion.

Prior to 20th century Monetarist theory, the 19th century economist and philosopher Frédéric Bastiat expressed the idea that trade deficits actually were a manifestation of profit, rather than a loss. He proposed as an example to suppose that he, a Frenchman, exported French wine and imported British coal, turning a profit. He supposed he was in France, and sent a cask of wine which was worth 50 francs to England. The customhouse would record an export of 50 francs. If, in England, the wine sold for 70 francs (or the pound equivalent), which he then used to buy coal, which he imported into France, and was found to be worth 90 francs in France, he would have made a profit of 40 francs. But the customhouse would say that the value of imports exceeded that of exports and was trade deficit against the ledger of France.[22]

By reductio ad absurdum, Bastiat argued that the national trade deficit was an indicator of a successful economy, rather than a failing one. Bastiat predicted that a successful, growing economy would result in greater trade deficits, and an unsuccessful, shrinking economy would result in lower trade deficits. This was later, in the 20th century, echoed by economist Milton Friedman.

In the 1980s, Milton Friedman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and a proponent of Monetarism, contended that some of the concerns of trade deficits are unfair criticisms in an attempt to push macroeconomic policies favorable to exporting industries.

Conventional economists claim that (The Global Financial Collapse) was an unforeseeable event....That is manifestly false. With a realistic approach to economics, this crisis was entirely predictable.

I was able to warn of the crisis because I have extended the realistic approach to economics developed by Hyman Minsky, which he called the "Financial Instability Hypothesis". This led me to focus on the role of private debt in economic activity, and I knew that a crisis would hit as soon as the rate of growth of private debt slowed down. It did in late 2007, and the crisis I had been expecting began.

....

Is it any wonder that conventional economists didn't see this crisis coming? Their models ignore banks, debt and money, but they are essential aspects of a market economy, and they have to be included in economic models if they're to make any sense at all. Modeling capitalism without banks, debt and money is like modeling birds without wings.

And here I am putting up Steve Keen's self promotion. I hope I may be forgiven in this instance. :-)

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

If you are referring to the graph in my post note that it is a model of GDP vs GDP + change in private debt. I would be interested as to where, besides Keen's work, the variable GDP + change in private debt has appeared. Private debt has been dismissed by NCE economists much the same way Bernanke dismissed it by way of dismissing Irving Fisher's Debt Deflation Theory of Great Depressions. IMO Fisher nailed it and the major reason NCE was and remains blind to all harmful effects of run-amok finance is that it is willfully blind to the role of debt. From the POV of most of those funding universities and foundations this was a feature, not a bug. And the main reason so many 'mainstream' economists are dismissive of Keen's work is that to embrace it would constitute career suicide.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

Hazara Shia Muslims in the Pakistani province of Balochistan have refused to end protests against a spate of deadly attacks, despite community leaders agreeing to call off the agitation following talks with a government delegation.

Negotiations are under way but protesters, who have refused to bury those killed, continue to demand a military operation to secure the provincial capital, Quetta, and protect their community from future violence.

There are reports of solidarity protests being held in many cities across the country, including Lahore.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that the top priority for the nation is to bolster economic growth and create jobs for the middle class, warning that drastic government spending cuts will hurt U.S. economic recovery.

At a White House press conference, Obama argued that the looming automatic government spending cuts is not helpful to U.S. economic recovery and job creation.

"Our top priority must be to do everything we can to grow the economy and create good middle-class jobs. That's our top priority. That's our North Star," Obama stressed.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Thirty Saudi women took seats in Saudi Arabia's Shura Council, for the first time in the ultra-conservative kingdom's history, as they were sworn in before King Abdullah on Tuesday at his palace in Riyadh.

The women took their seats in the same room with their 130 male colleagues and were sworn in collectively, state television said.

Japan's Liberal Democratic Party has made no secret of its plan to comprehensively reform the Constitution, which it says was 'imposed' on the country after World War 2. On April 28, 2012, it revealed what these plans are. The date was chosen to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the San Francisco Peace Treaty. In Diet interpellations on January 30, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared that the party would move forward with these plans under his leadership. For many years, debate over constitutional amendment has focused on the war-renouncing Article 9 but the LDP reform plan is far more radical.

If successful, the party would delete Article 97, the Constitution's most powerful declaration of human rights, and make several other far-reaching changes, including elevating maintenance of "public order" over all individual rights; adding a new requirement that citizens "respect" the kimi ga yo hymn and the hinomaru flag; eliminating free speech protection for activities "with the purpose of damaging the public interest or public order, or associating with others for such purposes"; and reducing parliamentary majorities required for constitutional amendments.

If the party achieves these goals, it will create a Constitution that mandates citizen obligations to the state rather than the other way around. This would effectively mean a rejection of popular sovereignty and a return to Japan's prewar order. The LDP and its allies secured more than two-thirds of the House of Representatives in December elections. If they can achieve the same level in the House of Councilors, the door will be open to a new Constitution to match Mr. Abe's vision.

A panel of experts has agreed to come to the FCCJ and explain the significance of these enormously important proposals. Lawrence Repeta is a professor at Meiji University Faculty of Law. Masako Kamiya is a Professor of Law at Gakushuin University and representative director of the Japan Civil Liberties Union. Yoichi Kitamura is a representative director of the same union and a co-counsel in many noteworthy cases, including litigation that led to the historic 2005 Supreme Court decision that found the Diet in violation of the Constitution for failing to adopt adequate voting procedures for Japanese who reside abroad.

How many Japanese will even realize what is happening before this passes?

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

In this coming weekend's Italian election, there's obviously a lot of attention paid to Silvio Berlusconi, and whether or not he'll make a strong, comeback showing.
But the politician that a lot of folks are watching is Beppe Grillo, the head of his own "Five Start Movement" party, which has a very strong populist, anti-Eurozone, anti-banker bent.

If he has a huge showing in the election -- and the last polls had him in 3rd place, even ahead of Mario Monti -- then that could cause a major political disturbing.

Anyway, he had a huge rally in Milan tonight. Anywhere between 70k-100k showed up to hear him.

He must be doing a lot of things right. Can a left wing populist survive a victory in Italy? The Troika would shit themselves if he formed a government.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

this is why beppe is refusing to go on tv, because he (rightly, imo) rejects the r-l axis as part of the problem, and interviewers only know those brands as points of reference.
for example the new 5* councillors in sicily dropped their salaries immediately to E4000 and donated the savings to unemployment relief.

it's citizen-rooted.

beppe is populist, no doubt about it, and capers like swimming the straits of messina in winter at 65 qualifies for that tag, but the aging roue has his priapic olympianism as well, which impresses the low-info crowd, some of whom would happily sell him their own daughter if it helped their chances in the rat-race.

i think beppe appeals to basic decency and common sense. he's not running, and that is extremely smart, as the fire of his rhetoric (he does not mince words) still drifts into OTT. the actual candidates aren't mealy-mouthed, but they definitely don't showboat at all, just down to earth citizens, no distinguishing characteristics at all. beppe is in your face, yet he touches a nerve in italy because he is not afraid to say what everyone knows, and yet which the media here never really confronts...ie that the whole show is rotten to the core, and without him there is no way out of the situation that has been screwing up italy for decades. when you see him talk, you quickly realise he is using genuine (populist) humour, rich in earthy, sometimes scatological expletives to get people to wake up and take on board how bad it has become. he works the stage like otis redding, completely unsparing of himself, and his stamina is really extraordinary, all impromptu, a solo act of rebellion.

he doesn't want to identify with communism at all, the old left in italy that hasn't become centricized.

it's hard to refute 5* movement because it's trying to reinvent the whole approach. it's grass-roots because it is the only party that has turned down state funding, for example. he's not so much about changing the game, it's more about better rule enforcement and levelling the field.

i suspect that after people have seen area economies and quality of life buck downward trends in regions where 5*'ers have been elected, then his rants will be less needed, and his party will be judged on merit alone.

berlusconi realised his pet alfano wasn't up to snuff and so we have him -with all his baggage- back on the frontline, with all the old advantages he turned to his favour many times before, media control, beloved sports teams, his political cunning and ability to bribe anyone who can be bought.

the baggage is heavy and awkward, though, it's not going away, and to get a majority he will have to convince the lega to get solidly on board in the next week, unlikely.

a majority composed of PD, Ingroia's new party of lawnorder (he's a prosecutor type with good antimafia cred), and the 5* ers might be able to get something done for italy.

luckily the main centre right don't get along, casini, fini, berlu, marroni all failed models in their own way. monti means just more of the same regimen italy's bent double under already, so i don't see him making any waves, and his voters will drift right if anything, but there's lots of bad blood with berlu, garmonious bedfellowship highly unlikely.

so it's a perfect moment for a new party like 5*, especially as they promise a citizens' stipend of E1000+ a month for a few years to get on your feet, free education, wifi, and real attention paid to the environment for a freaking change...enough cancer-causing incinerators already...

the battlefield is weary, the old warriors broken and unfocussed, and beppe's early grocking of the web has enabled him to become a big portal for those disgusted with the present setup to gather at. how many votes will that mean?

hard to say, some show up just for a few laffs but don't really get it maybe... he is really funny, taking exasperation to unheard of levels, you wonder how much the man can pop his cork and not blow a blood-vessel!

shades of savanarola and reform... not of piety, but of civic awareness and empowerment.

Analysis of Netanyahu's strategy: With Livni in the coalition, the idea is now to go for Torah Judaism, Shas, and Forward. If he gets them to agree, then he has 57 out of 120 seats. He will then go to Jewish Home with an ultimatum: join me or face new elections. If Benett then folds, he has a safe majority, and There is a Future is left in the opposition, with no more nonsense on drafting the Haredim.

Ever since the crash of 2008 exposed the rotten core of a failed economic model, we've been told there are no viable alternatives. [...]
So what should we make of a part of the world where governments have resolutely turned their back on that model, slashed poverty and inequality, taken back industries and resources from corporate control, massively expanded public services and democratic participation - and keep getting re-elected in fiercely contested elections?

Beef pasta meals have been removed from sale in Spain and Italy after manufacturer Nestlé discovers they contain horse DNA. The Swiss-based company says more than 1% horse DNA was found in Buitoni beef ravioli and beef tortellini. The firm says the findings pose no risk to health

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Supermarkets around the world insist on having the very best products on their shelves - so much so that they're willing to throw away perfectly edible food, because it doesn't fit their size and cosmetic standards.

Al Jazeera's Laurence Lee reports from Kent in the UK on how campaigners are trying to save that waste.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Foreign investors are buying or leasing vast amounts of farmland in Third World countries to profit from surging demand for food crops as a result of rapid population growth. "Land grabbing" amounts to a new form of colonialism that often runs counter to the interests of locals.

A number of developing nations have sold or leased much of their farmland to foreign investors. The list is led by Liberia, whose arable land is 100 percent under foreign ownership.

OAS_RICH('Middle2'); The process is known as "land grabbing," and it is affecting countries in Africa, South America, Asia and Eastern Europe. Around half of the farmland of the Philippines is owned by foreign investors. In Ukraine, American companies have secured over one-third of the country's farmland.

Population growth in countries like India and Brazil is driving up demand for cereal crops, and investments in farmlands offer the chance of solid returns

Children and adolescents who watch a lot of television are more likely to manifest antisocial and criminal behavior when they become adults, according to a new study published online Monday in the U.S. journal Pediatrics.

The study followed a group of around 1,000 children born in the New Zealand city of Dunedin in 1972-73. Every two years between the ages of five and 15, they were asked how much television they watched. Those who watched more television were more likely to have a criminal conviction and were also more likely to have antisocial personality traits in adulthood.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Hm, I love the definition of antisocial behaviour implied here. Parking the kids in front of the TV is underclass behaviour, and we can expect these kids to show the typical criminality of that class. There are more expensive ways to park kids, and these kids will later become banksters, tax evaders, or traders of "beef".

The proposals put forward by the Conservative Party for a royal charter to oversee the regulation of the press have been condemned by the CPBF, which does not believe that 'press freedom' means complete freedom for newspaper owners to act just as they please. In the Campaign's view the move represents an abject surrender to the press proprietors and a serious attack on Leveson's proposals for effective press regulation.

Furthermore, in their haste to ward off any form of statutory regulation, the press owners and the government, acting in concert, have actually come up with plans for a body which, if granted such a charter, would surrender crucial aspects of the control of its internal affairs to the unelected Privy Council. Transparency and public accountability would then go out of the window.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Did they F*&@ they described it as horribly left wing and an assult on the freedom of the press, even though it's not only alomost identical to the old discredited system, it also has built in blocks on any future changes to enforce any other rules

Must be rubbing their hands all the way to the bank behind the scenes though

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

A software update took down the main communications system for the International Space Station on Tuesday, leaving astronauts reliant on 1960s technology to phone home to systems administrators.

"Flight controllers were in the process of updating the station's command and control software and were transitioning from the primary computer to the backup computer to complete the software load when the loss of communication occurred," said NASA in a statement.

"Mission Control Houston was able to communicate with the crew as the space station flew over Russian ground stations before 11:00 a.m. EST and instructed the crew to connect another computer to begin the process of restoring communications."

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

MIT scientist and Nobel Laureate in Physics Samuel Ting told reporters at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) that the first results from the costly Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) are ready.

The spectrometer is a particle collector mounted on the outside of the International Space Station to comb the void for high-energy particles or cosmic rays. Ting heads up the AMS project, whose experiments are among the most expensive ever conducted in space.

Ting wouldn't say exactly what the AMS has come up with, but he said the results will concern the mystery of dark matter, the invisible material that in theory makes up a significant portion of the universe: about five per cent is said to be visible atomic matter, and the rest is a bit of a mystery.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Set amongst the backdrop of the beautiful snowy mountains in Tignes, France, Chicherit drove up a static ramp and launched his Mini Countryman at just the right speed to allow him to fully rotate his vehicle before landing on a bank of snow. According Mini it was the first successful completion of such a stunt.

Romanian police on Tuesday busted a human egg-trafficking ring involving Israeli specialists in assisted reproduction, just months after several Israeli doctors were sentenced in a similar case.

Police and prosecutors said the network consisted of 11 people, including Israeli doctors and Romanian managers of a Bucharest clinic, but declined to say how many people were detained as the searches were ongoing.

...

"Commentariolus," or "Little Commentary," was first circulated in 1514, and included Copernicus's famous seven axioms:

1. There is no one center in the universe.

2. The Earth's center is not the center of the universe.

3. The center of the universe is near the sun.

4. The distance from the Earth to the sun is imperceptible compared with the distance to the stars.

5. The rotation of the Earth accounts for the apparent daily rotation of the stars.

6. The apparent annual cycle of movements of the sun is caused by the Earth revolving round it.

7. The apparent retrograde motion of the planets is caused by the motion of the Earth from which one observes.

"Commentariolus" was distributed primarily among Copernicus's friends - its audience was not wide. In fact, it was Copernicus's definitive text, "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium," or "On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres," that made his name. That book, which is hundreds of pages long, was attacked by the Catholic church and by Martin Luther, who called Copernicus a "fool."